1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system and method of providing language translation services and more particularly to a system and method of providing location-based language translation services for a wireless device.
2. Discussion of Related Art
Language translation services are becoming more common as automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems and language translation systems improve. For example, FIG. 5 illustrates a known translation system 50 including an input device 52 such as a microphone and computer device or wireless device. An ASR module 54 receives the speech signal from the input device 52. The ASR module 54 uses any one of many known techniques for speech recognition to determine the content of the speech signal.
As used herein, a “source” language is the language of the received speech signal, such as English or Japanese. Not shown in FIG. 5 are other elements that may include a digitizer and data transfer bus between the input device 92 and ASR module 94. The system 90 further includes a language translation module 96 and a speech synthesizer module 98 that transmits the synthesized speech to an output device 100. These modules may also be any known modules for language translation and speech synthesis. A control and memory module 102 stores data and controls the operation of the associated components. The language translation module 96 has an associated “target” language into which the source language is translated. In FIG. 5, the “target language” is Spanish. A sample of a portable speech translation system may be found in U.S. Pat. No. 6,266,642, the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.
To translate an English message into Spanish, the ASR module 94 recognizes the message in English, the translation module 96 translates the English into Spanish, the speech synthesizer 98 synthesizes the message in Spanish and the output device 100 speaks the synthesized Spanish version of the message. The translation module 96 may comprise a text-to-text translation model such as that disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,805,832 to Brown et al., incorporated herein. Any other suitable translation means may be employed and such means as are presently known or subsequently developed may be used for the language translation.
Translation devices may be wireless as taught in U.S. Pat. No. 6,266,642 to Franz et al. (“Franz et al.”), also incorporated herein by reference. Franz et al. disclose a method and an apparatus for performing spoken language translation. A source language speech input is received. The speech input comprises words, sentences, and phrases in a natural spoken language. The apparatus recognizes source expressions in the source language. Through an interactive dialogue, the user selects and confirms a recognized source expression. The apparatus translates the recognized source expressions from the source language to a target language, and synthesizes a speech output from the translated target language source expressions. Moreover, the apparatus detects a meaning of the speech input, and renders the meaning in the synthesized translated output.
Franz et al. further disclose a portable unit, such as a cellular phone, that performs spoken language translation. The cellular phone receives a natural spoken language input, performs translation, performs speech synthesis on the translation, and outputs translated natural spoken language.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,882,681 to Brotz (“Brotz”), incorporated herein by reference, also discloses a wireless translation system similar to the Franz et al. system. Brotz discloses a system for simultaneously translating a conversation through a wireless device where a remote computer server performs language translation and synthesis. While the Brotz and Franz et al. systems provide basic translation services on a portable device, their systems are inefficient for a user who travels from one location to another where a variety of different target languages are spoken. Franz et al. only focus on a source language being translated into a single target language. In fact, Franz et al. are silent with regards to choosing which target language into which the source language is translated. Brotz's system requires a user of a mobile device to select a different frequency to change the target language. For example, if a user needs translation services from English to French, the system uses one frequency, and if the user requires Spanish translation, he or she selects a different frequency in order to indicate to the computer system to switch language translation compilers.
These related systems render the process of selecting and switching between target languages cumbersome. Either they disclose no efficient method of changing target languages or they require changing between frequencies or requiring a user to maneuver through a menu system to request a target language preference inhibit and complicate the use of mobile language translation system.